The Lives Of Others

Searching For A Cause

On Tuesday afternoon I took the L train downtown to go to a Practicum workshop at my school.  I got information about possibly working with grieving families, homeless children, and Native American Families.  The room, Namaste Hall, where we usually explored the depths of our souls in various drama therapy class, was crammed with a U of conference tables, well meaning people and excited students.  I had hoped to find a good place to work with the aging population, but the closest I could find was helping their families deal with their grief after the said aging people had died. 

The Train

After leaving fairly disappointed I skimmed the books at the goodwill and, feeling 0 for 2, went down to take the L home.  The train was spacious enough for me to sit by myself and lean against the wall near the window.  While listening to my ipod shuffle around my music library, I noticed an older man come in with something under his arm sit down.  Maybe I noticed him because of his adidas sneakers, which should have been on the feet of someone younger.  Then again, it is becoming more common to see older people wearing sneakers with their slacks, dress shirts, and sweater vests.  He sat down ten feet away and opened up the white package under his arm.  It appeared to be wrapped in white tissue paper.  He only unwrapped it enough to gaze at what was inside.  His face didn’t change as he leaned forward slightly.  He adjusted the package a little, as if taking in the item from all angles.  Again, I must note that his faced showed no emotion beyond an intense focus on what he was looking at.  For minutes upon minutes, stop after stop, he gazed into the unwrapped flower of paper, sometimes adjusting his weight, or tilting his head to the side, but never looking away.  I finally changed seats to see what he was looking at.  I sat a little closer when my angle was better, but I could still barely make out his treasure.  It appeared to be circular.  A plate?  A clock?  Yes, it as a clock, white with black hands and small pictures instead of numbers.  I squinted my eyes.  Birds?  Chickens?  This old man enamored with a chicken clock?  His lips parted, rubbing his chin absentmindedly as if he were looking at a difficult math equation?  As the train pulled into Castro station he quickly rewrapped the clock, stood up and left.

The Walk

Later that day as I was walking home I took a street with narrow sidewalks because they were lined with hedges.  I was almost upon them before I realized there were two people sitting on the ground, near the hedges, wrapped up in such an embrace that I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.  They seemed to be sitting next to each other, but facing opposite directions, leaning into each other, arms wrapped around each other’s backs, head’s on each other’s shoulders, similar dark clothes and hats, the hair of one over the back of the other.  In the falling dark it could have been two lovers, one comforting the other, a mother and child, or even none person wrapped in layers against the cold, clutching themselves.  I wondered what had occurred to form this apparition before me.  Assuming it was two people, what tragedy, or what ache, had brought them to such a still embrace?

The Church

Recently I was watching a film or reading a book that had a character going to church.  I noticed myself having a feeling I often felt, which was annoyance at how many things I come in contact with have Christian people or characters.  It wasn’t about them being bad or anything like that, it was just the sheer numbers, the inundation of seeing people experience this as if it were the norm, but it had nothing to do with my life.  I knew I had had these feeling for a long time, maybe my whole life, but had never really examined them.  I didn’t want to be a jerk and say “I’m annoyed with all these Christians!” cause how could I explain it and not sound like a jerk?  I would be lumped together with those who are annoyed with everything religious people do and I didn’t want to be seen that way.  Did I?  Then it hit me.

The Privilege

In  many of my classes we have looked closely at the privileges in our society.  If one is to be a therapist one must be aware of their preconceived notions.  For example: if I am spurned by a brown-haired lover, and feel anger towards brunettes, I better know this before I get a client with brown lox.  If I don’t my thoughts and actions will be controlled by a resentment that has nothing to do with my client.  By looking at our privileges we back the lens up to view society as a whole.  How is my life affected by things I don’t realize?  Apparently, a lot. More than the things I DO realize.  The ways we are privileged we can miss.  It’s the ways we are oppressed that we notice.  The main privileges we have discussed for Americans are; being white, male, straight, able bodied, neurologically typical, between about 20-50, accepted body type, native born, native English speaker, middle and upper class, and Christian.  If I am white, male and straight, I don’t often think of these are defining characteristics.  They are “normal.”  If I am a woman, or black, gay, in a wheelchair, or poor, these definitely form how I view myself, how I make my identity.  How could they not, when this is how society views me BEFORE it sees me as a person?

I came up on the privileged end of all of these, except the Christian one.  Okay, I have a lot of privileges, and because I’m privileged, others must be oppressed, and I’m benefiting form the oppression of others.  Hmm, something to think about.  How can I be more aware of my place in the world.  These are great things to be thinking about.  What I didn’t think of much was the one place I’m not part of the privileged group, the Christian group.  Until recently, as noted above.  And then it hit me.

The Revelation

This feeling I have, this exhaustion with being inundated with people unlike me…is this how people of color feel?  Women?  Immigrants?  People with cerebral palsy?  As academic as my understanding of oppressed groups had been, here was a tiny lens into what it actually FELT like.  So much of our arguments use the same words, but they mean different things to different people, because they FEEL different.

The Meaning.

We seem to think in analogies.  One thing is LIKE another.  Since every moment is different, everything is different, nothing is really the same or comparable, we must be thinking in analogies.  For example, if I hold up a ball and say I’m going to drop it, what will happen?  How do you know?  Have I stood before you, in this time, in this place, with this ball and dropped it before?  No, but similar examples have occurred.  We base what we think will happen on what has happened before.  The ball will fall to the floor.  If it doesn’t we are surprised.  We do this with how we view people as well.  The problem is, often we aren’t aware of it.  The next time we have a strong reaction to someone, whether in person or famous, try to race the feeling.  Don’t fear where it goes so much that you lie to yourself.  Be brave, see what it happens.

Bindlestiff: Becoming An Ally In The Play Space

Bindlestiff: Becoming an Ally in The Play Space

Dan Weil

Student: California Institute of Integral Studies

Abstract

When some people are privileged that means that others are oppressed.  This imbalance takes a toll on everyone, but especially those of the oppressed groups.  As a white male living in the Bay Area, my entire life has been saturated with the arts of people with different cultural backgrounds than my own.  This paper will focus on my immersion into Bindlestiff Studio, a Filipino-American performing arts space.  I will look at how the theatre relates to Nieto’s (2010) developmental stages in Agent(privileged) and Target(oppressed) groups.  I will also investigate my reactions and growth as a white male.  This paper will explore how Bindlestiff, as a Filipino-American theatre, created a safe play space¹ which allowed the Filipino artists a deeper exploration of cultural issues than would be possible in a theatre run by whites

History of Bindlestiff, The Philippines, and Filipino Americans

Bindlestiff Studio opened in 1989 in San Francisco’s South of Market.  I joined in 1995 at the age of 16.  By 1997 the group running the theatre was burned-out and ready to move on.  This was about time that a fellow actor put on a show about the history of the Filipino Woman.  The play was called Babae:Woman(Babae is woman in Tagalog).  In the audience were members of a new Filipino theatre company who were hungry to do more art.  The group was comprised of 2^nd and 3^rd generation Filipino-Americans and Filipinos who had immigrated.  They took over the space soon after, and the little black box theatre became the only Filipino-American performing arts space in the country.  Over the years Bindlestiff produced dozens of shows including theatre, poetry, and music, all exploring the identity of being Filipino and Filipino-American.

            The Philippines is an archipelago of over 3,000 islands.  In the 16^th century Spain colonized the islands, spread Catholicism, and established a Spanish ruling class.  A variety of uprising by Filipinos over the next 400 years weren’t successful until the Spanish-American war.  Promised freedom by the United States, the Filipinos fought and helped defeat Spain.  When the war was over America took control of the country, leading to guerilla warfare.  Unable to fight America’s modern weaponry, the Philippines became a colony of the United States.  It wasn’t 1946 that the Philippines became an independent country.  The government has been marred by corruption, especially the 1960’s through 1980’s, when President Marcos ruled with martial law.  These are the conditions from which many Filipinos immigrated to the United States (Dela Cruz, et. al 2003).

            Most Filipinos who immigrated to the United States came to the west coast or Hawaii.  As with immigrants and non-whites, they were often feared, discriminated against, and blamed for society’s ills.  During World War II Filipinos were recruited to be cooks and stewards in the army, and after the 1965 Immigration act they began to arrive in America in waves. (Philippine History 2011; Chico University 1998). Though they comprise the largest group of Pacific Islanders in America and the largest group of Asians in California, their customs are virtually unknown to mainstream America, and even many “Americanized” Filipinos.  For this reason they have been referred to as the “invisible minority.”(Arain 2011)

Babae

In 1997 Lorna Aquino Chui performed a one-woman show called Babae: Woman, which encapsulated the history of the Philippines into a half dozen short scenes reflecting the major themes of the country and its’ emigrants.  These themes were large and very common in the lives of Filipino-Americans.  Even those who knew very little about the history of the Philippines could recognize certain words, references, or mannerisms from their family.

            The play began with a Filipino creation myth.  A bird breaks open a piece of bamboo, revealing man and woman.  Throughout the play Lorna played this woman with a clown nose.  This is not to mock the character, but to connect her to the sacred clown, the un-changeable core of us, what Landy(2009)would call the guide but Johnson(1996) more accurately calls the true self, stripped of the layers of our roles.  In this way, Chui’s clown represented the core of the Filipino people.  She then sent this clown through many of the formative struggles of her people.

            One of the most memorable and masterfully simple scenes involved only Chui and a prerecorded voice of a Spanish sailor.  Chui’s clown, playing a Filipino native, greeted the sailor by telling him the names of things around her.  Tubig for water, Lupa for earth, Langit for Sky.  He answered with Aqua, terra, cielo, respectively.  They then went back and forth, one word at a time.  “Tubig-Aqua, lupa-terra, langit-cielo.”  The next go-round she only got one syllable out.  “Tu-Aqua, lu-terra, lang-cielo.”  Next she could only purse her lips to make the Tagalog words before the Spanish words interrupted and replaced them.  This showed not just the loss of native language to the colonizer, but the loss of culture and tradition.  Because Chui faced the audience in this scene, and there was no actual actor playing the Spaniard, it was easy for me to imagine that we, the audience, were the colonizers.  Without even speaking I, as a man of European descent, was taking away the culture of a brown person.  The aesthetics (Emunah 1994; Landy 1994) of this piece brought about something not specifically stated; that the privilege and oppression from this cultural theft, and thefts like it, are still continuing today(McIntosh 1990).

            Time speeds forward and The Clown is now on an empty stage and a clothes rack walks in with three pieces of clothing; an American soldier's jacket, a long white dress, and a leopard print robe.  These are three stereotypical roles often attributed to Filipinos.  Chui said “this reflects the dichotomy between virgin and whore, Catholicism and capitalism, both combining in women having to sell their bodies in order to make a living.”

            She chooses the dress and becomes a mail order bride.  In the next scene she wears a mask on the top of her head and leans forward to play an old man.  In this way she is able to go back and forth effortlessly between the Filipina immigrant and a lecherous old man simply by leaning forward and looking down, or standing up straight and facing forward.  This technique proves terribly effective when the old man rapes her.  She is on all fours, alternating between looking down so the mask is shown while she plunges downward, with looking out at the audience and crying out in agony.  Both characters seem to be looking toward the audience as if making them complicit in this act.  If the scene were played out with two actors, I may have been taken out of the power of it by thinking about how the actors felt touching each other in such a way.  The scene would have to be played out somewhat symbolically.  By Chui playing both parts, one at a time but always implying the other character, the audience’s attention is taken up by what they see and what they imagine.  We become partners in the scene by imagining the other character violating and being violated.  In this way we truly become complicit in the act, and once again must look at how this scene still plays out in our culture.

            The play ends with The Clown rocking a bassinet, and passing down to the baby girl a Filipino amulet called an anting anting for protection.  Inside of the bassinet is the bamboo woman, symbolizing the rebirth and continuation of the Filipina, and thus the Filipino people as a whole, even after all their struggles.  The culture continues today, amazingly intact, with 175 native languages presently spoken there(Lewis 2009).

            Though Babae:Woman was a play and not a workshop of people from different cultures, many of the themes made me think of Volkas’ (2009) drama therapy technique Healing the Wounds of History.  The collective trauma of colonization was passed down through the generations.  Because the play was produced in the United States, that made the audience Americans, mostly of European and Filipino descent.  I found myself thinking about American’s complicity in the continued colonization of the Philippines, the exoticising of the Asian Woman, and my county’s treatment of non-white immigrants.  Because this was a show and not a workshop, these feelings could have ended there.  I could have had ideas stirred in my head, but forgotten them soon after, just as Boal noted when inspired to create Theatre For The Oppressed (Sajnani 2009).  The audience members of Filipino descent had a different experience.  While I focused on the aesthetics of the theatre and what I was learning, the Filipino audience was drawn into a story created by one of them, for them.  McIntosh (1990) notes in her list of things a privileged group takes for granted, “I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.”  Before Bindlestiff became a Filipino performing arts space, Babae acted as a beacon and an inspiration to other local Filipino and Filipino-American artists.  If it wasn’t for this show, Bindlestiff may have never gone through the cultural metamorphosis that made it the unique space it is today.

Bomba

My first show after Bindlestiff became a Filipino theatre was called Bomba, which means naked in Tagalog.  The play comically explored the effects of colonization by America.  The first piece began in a nightclub during World War II.  Filipinas in short skirts served drinks to American GI’s who made lewd comments.  I played one of these soldiers.  Because I was friends with the cast, I felt somewhat comfortable when told to bean exaggerated version of a racist white man.  The cast seemed to enjoy the rehearsals when I was especially offensive.  After a few minutes one of the wronged waitresses makes a wish and suddenly everything is switched.  Now the Filipinas are dressed as soldiers and sitting at the tables, and the white GI’s are dressed in very short shorts, vests with no shirts, and sailor hats, all sewn from American flags.  Though the scene was played for laughs there was something else in the way the women sneered at us, slapped our rears and joked about our appearance.  They were able to symbolically make fools of us, emasculate us, strip away our power and force us into the role of sex object or clown, whichever they preferred.  These women could enact the cause of some of their historical shame upon us, to be cruel and violent, without truly being cruel and violent.  Just as Landers (2002) explored how dramatic violence in the play space can curb violent impulses in real life, ancestral catharsis can be had by acting out vengeance.  Though the Filipinos and whites in the show were all friends and would never be so mean to each other in real life, this doesn’t mean that there weren’t unconscious resentments that could be triggered from any perceived slight or rude action.  In this way personal effects of the history of oppression could be explored, along with feelings toward those of the privileged group.  After rehearsals and performances there was a loose, light feeling among the cast, as if we had aired our dirty laundry.

The Power of the Space

As I was exploring my feelings about race as a white man, the Filipino-Americans at Bindlestiff were affected in a different way.  While I can never presume to know how other people feel, I spent many years involved with Bindlestiff, and have talked extensively with the artists over the years.  Many people told me that the theatre felt like home.  When I asked them if they meant like the home where they grew up, they invariably answered with a yes and no.  Being surrounded by other, Filipinos, hearing Tagalog, and sharing stories of common customs and rituals felt familiar.  They said it was a place they could come and be themselves, which is only partially true of their own homes.  Some felt a great divide between themselves and their Filipino-born parents.  This could be simply because of the generation gap, or of differences in culture and beliefs toward the role of women or homosexuality.  Bindlestiff may have reminded people of home, but home on a deeper level.  Not only could they explore their feelings about racism and oppression within the context of being Filipino in America, but also their feelings about their own homes, their own shame and accomplishments.

According to Marcia’s identity statuses, exploring ones own identity is typical of Americans when they are in their teens or early twenties(Rathus 2006).  His 4 stages include Identity Diffusion, when we don’t really realize our identity; Foreclosure, when we explore other ways of identifying without making any commitments; Moratorium, when we commit to something without questioning it; and Identity Achievement, when after some exploring and questioning, we considerably developing our identity(Rathus 2006).  Theatre and the arts are a perfect place to explore oneself outside of the familial identity, because as art forms they are all about self-expression.  Being different is applauded, rather than criticized.  What differentiates oppressed groups is that they must find themselves not just in response to their family and cultural structure, but within a country that subtly gives them the message of disapproval (McIntosh 1990; Tatum 1997).

If we enfold Marcia’s view of identity with a Nieto’s (2010) Developmental Stages we begin to see the subtle effects of being in an oppressed group.  The 5 stages for the Oppressed, or as Nieto calls them, the Target group, are Survival, Confusion, Empowerment, Strategizing, and Re-centering. The Survival stage is someone simply doing what needs to be done to survive.  The next stage, Confusion, involves becoming more aware of injustices and differences between themselves and those of the privileged group, but not knowing how to reconcile or understand this.  Empowerment sees the Target engaging in group-centric activities, and taking rigid views of their own culture and the privileged group.  Neito’s fourth developmental stage, Strategizing, has an individual who chooses their battles and thinks more strategically about how to help their people as well as work with people in the Privileged, or as Nieto calls them, Agent group.  The fifth and final stage is called Re-centering.  The target group sees themselves as more than just a member of their target group, but as someone within the entire system, and has a more inclusive philosophy while pursuing social justice with other target members and Agent allies.  One can easily see how someone in Nieto’s Survival stage could also be in Marcia’s Identity Diffusion stage, or the connection between Identity Achievement with Strategizing and Re-centering.

Because Bindlestiff fulfilled so many needs for Filipinos in various places on Nieto’s and Marcia’s spectrums, it was able to be a safe space to delve even deeper into issues of identity.  Bindlestiff as a cultural center was many things, including but not limited to a place to see others that look like yourself, talk like yourself, have similar customs, rituals, problems with/connections to the parents and ancestors, and experiences of racism.  It was also a place to meet other people who are exploring their identity in the same development stage as or in a more developed stage, a place to escape the difficulties of home or childhood, and to find acceptance.  It was a place of family and community, a place to create art and be inspired by other artists, learn the technical skills of theatre and the business of running a theatre, and to improve the skill or working with others.  Most importantly it was a place to invite those close to you so as to share what you have gained, a place to not only create art, but create art collaboratively with others, and a place to express to other members of your target group, as well as those of the agent group, who you are.  Because Bindlestiff acted as a refuge from injustice and oppression, as well as family differences, it aided those in Marcia’s more white, western-centric stages, as well as those in Nieto’s multicultural stages. The artists were more able to feel safe and accepted, and thus open up and explore their issues, whatever the source.  This may be why, 14 years after Bindlestiff became a Filipino American performing arts venue, I am still connected to and support the theatre.  Many of the above mentioned benefits of the space helped teach me about race and my role in the privileged power structure.  Many of the other benefits had nothing to do with race, but of being productive, expressive, and connected with others.  Since a key component to effective drama therapy is creating a safe space (Emunah 1994) (Landy1994), the existence of Bindlestiff helped cultivate not just shows like Babae and Bomba, but every meeting, rehearsal, and performance that occurred within its black walls.  The catharsis of Babae or Bomba could not have occurred in the same way if explored in a white production, in a white theatre for a white-only audience.  Being in the space itself was empowering, as was the fact that each of the white actors were willing to be in a show that wasn’t on their usual, privileged terms.

My Feelings and Reactions as a White Man

Some of my deepest connections to others have been through theatre techniques.  Though many of these explorations did not deal with cultural issues, I got to know other Filipino-American’s in ways I couldn’t have if it were not in the play space.  If I had simply seen the plays, and explored my own feelings about them through art, or with other whites, I would have become more aware of my own feelings, but still seen them from my own point of view, much as Coseo (1997) does in her paper on working with black youth.  I did my own writing and processing, but I did much more exploring with other artists in the play space.

            My most memorable experiences in the play space occurred during the rehearsals and performance for the play Coconut Masquerade by Melinda Corazon Foley.  Because Foley, of mixed Filipino and Irish descent, based the play on her own life, there was a charged atmosphere to the rehearsals.  Besides the dichotomy of race, the show also explored the generation gap with her parents, the experience of Vietnam Veterans, and power of the past.  Behind the scenes we had a combination of spoken word poets and actors, as well as changes in the management of the theatre. All of these aspects of the show made every rehearsal feel charged with an energy that could make or break us.  When our director got chicken pox it seemed the show would implode.  Our new director couldn’t begin for another week, so I filled the interim time with different theatre warm-ups I had learned as well as some I developed on the spot.  The techniques usually involved the embodiment of our characters and playing out times that weren’t depicted in the play.  I took Foley’s character back in time to when she was a child, and we had a family dinner, exploring the impetus of many of the family’s problems.  Foley basically played herself in the show, but over the months of rehearsal we began to identify with our characters more and more.  Since I played a veteran, sometimes I came to the theatre early to prepare.  I put on some chaotic music, grabbed a prop rifle, and stalked around for hours in the dark.  After a few minutes alone in the dark I entered an altered state of hyper-vigilance.  In the play there is a particularly intense scene with my character and his wife, in which she pours her heart out and he, burned out from PTSD, simply watches television.  On the closing night of our run, my wife became so frustrated that she grabbed the remote control and flung it against the wall.  I remember my actions as if I weren’t myself.  I began to laugh quietly, mirthlessly, then louder, at what we had become.  It was the most non-myself I’ve ever felt.  Ever since I have felt a particular affinity for the struggle of veterans returning to society.  At the end of the run, Foley said I was like a shaman.  Snow (2009) sheds some light on this as he points toward the connection between ritual, theatre and therapy.  These types of exercises helped me bond with my fellow actors, many of whom were Filipino-Americans.  Whether the scenes explored racism or not, they explored who we were on a deep level.  Because of this I became a true ally, in the sense that their struggles for identity and social justice were as real, as valid, as tangible as my own.  Thus, my subsequent work with the theatre was not because I had romanticized their culture, or wanted to live vicariously through them, but because they, as people, were real.

Conclusion

Bindlestiff’s metamorphosis into a Filipino-American performing arts space made it a safe play space and an ideal breeding ground for Filipino-Americans to cultivate risky, meaningful, cathartic art.  The infectious excitement pulled me even deeper into the theatre, where I set aside my privileged status and created theatre with and for Filipinos.  I became an ally (Nieto 2010), supporting the Filipino artists’ artistic and social goals for their own community.  I was so immersed in another culture that I was forced to accept, deep down, not just their different views and feelings, but see the validity in them.  Beyond the time spent together, I was able to explore issues of race, cultures, and relationships within the play space(Johnson 1996).  This helped me feel connected to the other artists on a deep level.  I always knew that I was supposed to feel this way, but my explorations in the play space helped me truly feel this.  This is something that has stayed with me, something I try to remember whenever I come into contact with a culture I don’t understand.

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¹.  It should be noted that while David Read Johnson(1996) uses the term playspace specifically to denote the “process of removal or transformation” happening between the therapist and the client based around the stripped down encounter between the two, I am using play space to mean a place of shared imagination between two or more people, more similar to Susana Pendzick’s(2006) dramatic realty, “a tangible entrance into an imaginary realm.”

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Dramatic Reality As Real Life

Hey y'all. Sorry It's been so long. Getting married, going to school. Anyway, I have been writing a lot, but it is mostly school papers. Here's one.

Dramatic Reality As Life

Dan Weil

Student: California Institute of Integral Studies

Abstract

Dramatic Reality is a core concept of Drama Therapy (Pendzick, 2006), but its root is represented in all forms of psychotherapy.  This paper examines how drama therapy uses the concept of dramatic reality to explore the bridge between the outer and inner worlds.  This paper also explores the idea that we as humans experience everything through the duality of our inner and outer worlds, thus, in some form, always existing within the realms of what drama therapists call dramatic reality.   This space between reality and fantasy is not just a psychological concept, but the way in which we encounter everything.  This paper will explore the ways that dramatic reality is used to safely construct representations of the real world, explore the connections between these constructs and the real world, and the paradoxes within this relationship.  This paper will also examine how some of the leading drama therapists in the field use dramatic reality and play.  Finally it looks at the use of transitional phenomena in play as part of the deepest journeys into dramatic reality.

Play

Why do we play?  From very early on, humans engage in games of pretend.  Is it simply a childish way of relating because we don’t understand the world, something we should eventually grow out of, or is it the purest form of how we relate to our surroundings?  We come into the world without the concept that we are separate (Rathus, 2006).  We don’t yet have object permanence, or know that when mom leaves the room she still exists.  We don’t know that there are different things going on in other people’s minds, that we all have a world inside of us.  Even at this early stage we like to play.  Very young children enjoy games of peek-a-boo.  With the onset of language they enjoy jokes such as mom calling herself Dad and vice versa.  During the nursery school years, children’s make-believe is characterized by a wildness, an anything-goes that could only exist in a world of no rules.  As children age, their games become more systematized.  They play sports with set rules, or make up their own games that nevertheless have specific rules.  If one walks in an Elementary school playground one will hear as much arguing over rules as playing.  As adults we relax by reading books or watching movies or sports.  When we meet people we don’t play with them anymore, we ask where they are from and what they do.  We don’t realize that we find humor the same way we always have, in incongruities.  A tough person acting dainty, or even simply one person resembling another make us laugh.  These incongruities reflect the biggest incongruity, the dual experience of the world through our inner and outer lenses.  Dramatic reality is the bridge between the inner and outer world, the place we used to explore as children, the place where we still reside.

Different Explorations In The Playspace

            There are many different ways that drama therapists help their clients create a safe space to explore their core issues.  One common theme is the working out of real life issues within the creative space of dramatic reality.  Beyond that, drama therapists fill the creative space with various different constructs to stand in for reality.  Emunah’s(1994) Integrative Five Phase Model begins with surface level theater games and only gradually works toward working through core issues.  This allows the clients to gradually share themselves in the therapeutic setting.  Phase One begins with dramatic play, with the goal of building trust in oneself, the other group members, and the therapist.  Emunah (1994) says that dramatic play “generates spontaneity and facilitates relationships and interaction.”  These goals become the building blocks for the later phases, which employ scene work, role play, a culminating enactment based on psychodrama, and a ritual closing.  All of these may not have been possible without the framework set in phase one with seemingly simple theater games and exercises.

In one session of a class I took with Emunah on Drama Therapy Process and Technique, she began by having the class walk around the room, then imagine ourselves a year ago.  Next we broke into pairs and talked as if we were a year in the past.  We played make-believe, embodying our past selves, yet not having to dredge up any intense experiences.  At the same time we were immersed in our memories, interacting with the other participants, and pretending.  Next we embodied an idea of ourselves in three years.  Rather than relying on memory, now we created who we were.  I found this exciting to imagine myself with a private practice.  Next, Emunah had us all drink a cup of juice.  At the bottom on the cup was a character trait that we had to take on at the “party” that was about to begin.  Now we were becoming characters and interacting even more, exaggerating ourselves or becoming something else, and of course, having fun.  Next we broke into groups of four and became a family, with each person taking on one of four roles; avoidance, angry/blamer, mediator and, attention-getter.  Then without words we improvised a scene and the audience tried to guess which role each of us had embodied.  Finally we broke into groups, took on one of the four family roles, and spent five minutes planning a family outing.  Our simple play had seamlessly become scene work, where we explored intense family relationships.  We didn’t need to bring our own lives into the sketches, but certain dynamics from our own families often bled through and informed the scenes.  Emunah had taken us, in a very safe way, down the road of dramatic reality toward deep sharing.  The place where we began to open up was not when we were asked “tell me about your family,” but rather when we began to play.  The fictional play allowed us to expand our possibilities, get beyond our life scripts and move beyond our dominant selves (Emunah 1994).  It was at the moment we weren’t trying to be who we are, that we expressed ourselves.  Emunah (1994) sees drama therapy as fostering “liberation, expansion and perspective.  Drama Therapy invites us to uncover and integrate dormant aspects of ourselves, to stretch our conception of who we are, and to experience our intrinsic connection with others.”  The use of play, the exploration of the self within dramatic reality, clearly works toward these lofty goals.

            David Read Johnson (1996), sees the encounter between the therapist and client as the most important aspect of therapy.  He bases this idea on Jerzy Grotowski’s Poor Theatre, which stripped away all props and costumes and even plot so that the audience and actor come face to face with nothing between them.  This same encounter can be employed to connect the client and therapist.  For Johnson, the therapist goes beyond the guide and actually intervenes into the playspace, becoming the client’s play object.  The client leads while the therapist is there to support the client and help create an encounter between the client and therapist, but also between the client and their true self.  In this way they both dive into the client’s playspace and explore what is there, letting the core issues present themselves as they will.  This seems much more free flowing then the play in Emunah’s Five Phase model.  Though Emunah has a model based on a process, and lets the client’s own work fuel the direction of therapy, there is still an external framework.  Johnson’s poor theater approach of DvT (Developmental Transformation) evenvelops the client and therapist into the client’s playspace almost like a science fiction film, and follows the streams of consciousness that pass by.  Robert Landy (1994) uses play to help the client gain perspective on the roles they take on in life.  After the play is over he deeply analyzes what happened.  Jennings (1992) sees the fictional realm as a place of deep, almost mystical truths that connect all of us, and does relatively little analysis or interaction of what therapy goes on there.  Though these drama therapists may vary in their focus on affect(Emunah), embodiment (Johnson and Jennings) or cognition (Landy), they all recognize and utilize the power of play.  This shared playspace is filled with imagined realms, hopes to grasp and fears to face.

Pretend States As Reality

The elements we bring into our play are based on the outside world.  The people, the emotions, and the places are all based on what we have experienced.  Pretending to be a wolf on the hunt may represent violent or predatory feelings, or ones of camaraderie.  Winnicott (1971), when looking at a mother and baby, calls the playspace the potential space between them, which he contrasts “(a) with the inner world (which is related to the psychosomatic partnership) and (b) with the actual, or external reality (which has its own dimensions, and which can be studied objectively and which…does remain constant).”  I take this idea a step further with the idea that even real life is a form of dramatic reality, that it is simply more objective than imagination. Pendzick’s idea of dramatic reality takes this potential space and places it within reality, rather than adjacent to it.  She calls dramatic reality (Pendzick 2006) “imagination manifested.  It is an as if made real, an island of imagination that becomes apparent in the midst of actual life.  Dramatic reality involves a departure from ordinary life into a world that is both actual and hypothetical: it is the establishment of a world within the world.”  This world within the world is not separate, but informed by the outer world that surrounds it.  If these pretend states are just pretend, why do they affect us so greatly?  Can’t we tell the difference between living something an acting it out.  Apparently, our brains can’t.  We don’t differentiate between real emotions from life and fictional ones that we feel while watching a movie.  That is to say, our brains don’t.  Why does this happen?  Mirror neurons may be a large piece of the puzzle.  A study at UCLA found that the pain neurons which fire when you poke a patient with a needle will also fire when the patient watches someone else getting a shot (Iacoboni M, et al. 2005).  The same phenomenon is found when comparing the brain of a person who feels sad from a life event with one watching a sad character movie.  This means that we can feel something that doesn’t happen to us, we can even feel it if it happens to a fictional character!  This goes beyond sympathy into empathy.  It also breaks down our idea of the barrier between the self and the world around us, making our experience of dramatic reality as real as reality itself.  This begs the question; what is the difference between reality and dramatic reality?

Paradox of Existence

When we play it is in the realm of the not real.  We are exploring possible worlds, yet we embody them as if they were factual (Elam, 1980).  In this way, the arena within dramatic reality, or the playspace, becomes reality.  At the same time, we are not in the real world.  For example, a client may be in therapy to work out anger issues toward his/her father.  The therapist may play the role of the father, or an empty chair may represent the father.  The client is able to say whatever they want without fear of actual punishment from the real father.  They are allowed to vent in a safe environment.  Afterwards they may feel a sense of catharsis, or, at the very least, some release.  These feelings are real.  The act of expressing oneself has real effects.  At the same time, the client’s father is not present.  This is the inherent paradox of the dramatic space.  The drama is based on reality, feeds on real emotions, and is a representation of reality.  This brings about the philosophical question; what is reality?  We are all inherently subjective.  Our experience of the world is based upon the way our brains are formed.  A bat or a whale, animals that rely on very different modes of “seeing” the world, experience reality in ways we can hardly imagine.  Their experience is so different that one could call it another reality altogether.  This means that even what we call reality is a construct.  What follows is that the difference between the outer and inner worlds is not comparing a reality and a construct, but two constructs.  If one sees reality as a subjective experience then the power of drama becomes much more understandable.  The constructed reality within drama becomes the subjective reality we experience through our senses.  The represented sadness or joy or catharsis can become real, because to the brain it is real.  By fading into dramatic reality, a place where we have much more power to explore time and space and emotions, we can find peace in ways we never could in the “reality.”

Transitional Phenomena

While working with Autistic children for over half a decade I realized that one of their biggest struggles is with transitions.  Waking up, coming to school, arriving at school, beginning recess, ending recess, leaving school, and leaving school are all events that could throw off a kid who is calm and focused.  I asked myself how could it be so hard to make these small transitions.  Then I noticed the same thing when picking up my friend’s daughter from school.  She would be so quiet on the car ride I thought she was angry with me, but then she brightened up when we got home.  I realized later that she was just acclimating to the change.  Then I thought about myself.  I get extremely nervous starting new schools or jobs, even if I’m not worried about any specific bad thing.  All of these suggest that it is not just Autistic children, but all of us who have trouble with transitions, but all of us.  Dictionary.com (2011) defines a transition as a “movement, passage, or change from one position, state, stage, subject, concept, etc., to another.”  We usually don’t think of leaving work and coming home as a change from one state to another, but this is what is happening.  Landy (1994) would say we are shedding the role of the worker and taking on the role of father, mother, lover, etc...  Transitions still affect us now, but our biggest transition was from the womb.  Then we went through a time where we didn’t know we were separate from the world, living in a near hallucinatory state Winnicott (1971).  It sounds as if we come into the world in a state where dramatic reality, and the inner and outer worlds don’t merely overlap, but are one and the same.  A primary caregiver’s love and support becomes the slow transition from being physically connected in the womb to the realization that one is autonomous.  When the mother begins to leave the child for longer and longer periods, the child may hold on to a teddy bear or blanket that symbolize the mother.  This is the impetus for what Winnicott termed the transitional object.  The child can play with this object, engage in make-believe games, proudly show it to others, or simply clutch it close to the body.  At this very young age, an infant is playing not just with a stuffed animal, but with something that represents his relationship with his mother.  He has realized he is separate from his mother, and that mother exists when she is not nearby, but he is still not completely comfortable with this fact.  With the transitional object he infuses reality with his inner emotions, marking an extremely early instance of dramatic reality in the child’s life.  Unlike us, he is not merging the inner and outer worlds into dramatic reality, but beginning to separate them.  This type of metaphoric play continues as children grow, as evidenced with Winnicott’s (1971) various case studies, including one where a child used string to connect himself to his mother, and another where a little girl represented her younger sibling and herself with two stuffed animals. 

I believe that we never completely leave this metaphoric state.  I believe that this dual experience creates our existential angst or the “human condition.”  Smiling seems to begin as a reflex or a way to connect with the caregiver (Rathus, 2006).  Later babies smile when they understand something.  Maybe humor begins when we realize the paradoxes of how we perceive the world.  This would explain why most humor is based on incongruities.

Conclusion

            Playing within dramatic reality is so effective and feels real because it is real.  If reality is a subjective construct itself, then it is different from dramatic reality only in degrees, not type.  Because the outer reality is a much less malleable construct it feels concrete and objective.  When seen in this light, dramatic reality is not a childish form of play nor a frivolous theatrical technique, but a slight exaggeration of the way in which we experience the world.  This is why work within this creative space can be so powerful.  Drama therapy goes beyond the speaking to the acting out, using the body, which is when we are the most truly in dramatic reality, the most spontaneous.  Much of what we are isn’t in words but physical ways we experience the world, the way children play, first exploring creativity with wild abandon, then with rules.  Soon these rules begin to negate the imaginary world.  Exploring these feeling, which often can’t be expressed in language, in a safe place that is reflective of how we live, is more effective than simply focusing on the inner and outer world, more powerful than discussing the bridge without walking on it.  The inner and outer worlds are not alone, they are always informing one another.  Accepting and working within this dialectic is the most healing.  To be most effective one usually needs a guide or therapist to help warm-up the mind to the task of dealing with difficult emotions, as well as navigating the wild terrain of the unconscious.  A trained therapist can help keep the space safe, as well as choose the correct paths toward fulfillment.

REFERENCES

Dictionary.com, transition

Elam, K.(1980). The semiotics of theatre and drama. London: Methuen.

Emunah, R.(1994), Acting For Real: Drama Therapy Process, Technique and

Performance, Brunner/Mazel Inc., New York, NY

Jennings, S.(1992) The Nature and Scope of Drama Therapy: Theatre of Healing,

Shakespeare Comes to Broadmoor, ch.IV.3, pp 229-250, Jessica Kingsley Press

Johnson, D.R.(1996), Toward a Poor Drama Therapy, The Arts In Psychotherapy, Vol 23,

#4, pp 293-306, Elsevier

Landy, R. (1994), Drama Therapy: Concepts, Theories and Practices, Charles C.

Thomas, Springfield, Ill.

Pendzick, S.(2006), On dramatic reality and it’s therapeutic function in drama therapy,

The Arts In Psychotherapy, volume 33, #4, pp 271-280, Elsevier

Iacoboni M, Molnar-Szakacs I, Gallese V, Buccino G, Mazziotta JC, et al. (2005)

Grasping The Intentions of Others with One’s Own Mirror Neuron Systerm. PLoS Biol 3(3): e79.

Rathus, S.(2006), Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Thomson

Wadsworth, Belmont CA.

Winnicott, D.W.(1971), Playing And Reality,  London: Routlidge

The Burrito

            This story is not about a real burrito.

            I used to work in a school with Autistic kids and it changed my life.  I began to see my similarities with them, and the line between crazy and sane faded away.  We differed only in grades.  Some of these kids just had characteristics that were more exaggerated than mine.  Say a kid really like to repeat verbatim an entire Sesame Street skit.  That might seem weird if you are sitting next to a stranger on the bus, but we relate shows and events we enjoyed to our friends all the time.  I once spent a first date describing the entire final episode of Quantum Leap.  We’re getting married.

Or a kid might be so worried he is going to get in trouble on a field trip that he sabotages himself by yelling and licking the windows of the bus.  Sure he gets in trouble, but the waiting and wondering is over.  He has taken control.  Many of us are anxious about the unknown, and have strange ways of taking from the ether.  I used to get really anxious about what I was going to order in a restaurant.  There’s just too many choices.  Now I’m a vegetarian, and that cuts out a lot of options.  But now there are more and more good vegetarian options, and I’m starting to get worried again.  Maybe I should cut out dairy.

Most teachers are female, and though this made for a lot of cute coworkers, there were also a few strange gender roles that formed.  It seemed that I was the only one that could move heavy desks.  This isn’t so surprising, and I helped as much as I could.  But why was I so much more adept at plunging the toilet than my coworkers?  Where did I learn to work the wooden handle, to listen to the building’s old pipes, to do quick little pumps, super slow deep ones, to almost always get the desired effect.  I was the king of plunging toilets.  It was my thing.  It got to the point that whenever I heard someone saying they were about to call a plumber I stopped what I was doing, wagged a finger, said “wait a minute” and grabbed the plunger.  Then I ran back and made sure someone was watching my kid.  Anyway, nine times out of ten I swaggered back to the front desk, hitting my hands against each other as if they were dusty. 

“Cancel the plumber.”

“I didn’t call yet.”

“Problem solved.”  Then I’d amble back to the bathroom and look at the murky water all over the tile that had spilled when the toilet was first clogged.  Before I was called in to solve the problem.  Why should this part fall to me as well?  I was a professional, not a custodian.  Now I don’t mean professional as in teacher, I mean a skilled laborer in the art of plunging.  Get that damn teacher who works with the little kids to mop this up!

When the Executive Director left the school she gave me a signed plunger as a parting gift.  Clearly I’m not making this up.  I was respected, at the highest level of authority, for my work.

But then one day it all changed.  It began uneventfully as usual, when I heard that the upstairs toilet was clogged.

“Did you try plunging it?” I asked Terri, not caring what her answer was and already planning my strategy.

“It didn’t do anything.  Eddie was in there…”

I held up my hands.  “It’s all right.  That’s all I need to know.”

I headed upstairs, thinking on the finicky toilet.  I used to work in a classroom right next to it, so I knew all about the chain that kept breaking and the low water flow.  You had to know these things to be The King of Plumbing and The Problem Solver.  I was considering checking the chain first, to make sure that wasn’t the problem, but as I entered the bathroom a rotten stench, like rotting flesh met my nose.  I closed the door because I like privacy when plunging, especially when it’s a doozy.  I walked up to the porcelain bowl.  As if to increase the suspense the lid was down.  God the smell was bad.  I was actually beginning to get a little nervous.  Not “oh no there are three kinds of grilled-cheese-sandwiches nervous, but my 1000% confidence was ebbing.

I reached forward slowly and flipped up the lid.  There, filling up almost the entire bowl, was a burrito-sized turd.  Not a small mall sized burrito, but a large thick taqueria burrito.  Turd isn’t even the right word.  Turd sounds small, like a baby bird or a stick.  This was a forearm.  No, it was more like a Tump, or a doop.

It was light brown and seemed soft and flakey like old wood.  Maybe the water was slowly disengaging the outside layer, but if I waited it out this would probably take weeks.  The top third of the tump was above water, so great was it’s bulk.  It was like an iceberg.’

“Assberg” I murmured to myself but didn’t chuckle.

After staring in awe I finally was ready to act.  I pushed the plunger toward the hole, pushed a few times and flushed.  The doop was unscathed and simply shook a bit, like a tired snake.  Or a snake laughing at me.  It didn’t even spin, it was so big.  It just shivered a little.

I plunged a few more time but I could tell that flushing then would be no more successful than the first time.  I set the plunger on the tile, stood up straight and took a step back to think.  Okay, time to solve this problem.  The thing is too big to go down, and too strong to break up.  But this crap needs to be broken up into, oh, maybe quesadilla sized pieces, but how was I to do that?  I could reach in and break it apart?  The thought mixed with the smell made me gag.  I imagined it’s slimy texture between my fingers.

I needed some tool that would do more than simply push, but would break it.  I looked at the handle of the plunger.  Okay, lets slow down.  Before I do something I regret, maybe I can still use the plunger the traditional way.  Sort of.

I grabbed the handle of the plunger and began to hammer like John Henry.  I hit it lightly but forcefully, I didn’t want to splash all over.  I focused on its middle and kept chopping until it started to break up into pieces.  I flushed.  It didn’t all go down, but a bunch of it did.  Three of four flushes later and it was gone.  It was over so fast I couldn’t believe it.  I put the plunger back in the corner and washed my hands.  I opened the window and looked outside at the trees swaying in the wind.  I felt alone with the memory.  I didn’t go downstairs to gloat.  I couldn’t imagine speaking after something like that.

            

Echo Part 2: Science Class

Part 1: Talking To Strangers is my previous post.  Thanks!

            Sally, lost in her thoughts, walked down the hall toward her class.

            “Hey Sally, nice dress.  Was the Goodwill having a sale?”  A few snickers accompanied the usual lame joke that, because it was mean seemed to be clever.  Sally ignored them and walked a little faster.  She tried to angle her head forward and will herself to be in her classroom.  Her legs felt like they would stumble any moment.  Unfortunately, a few lockers away from room 102, her backpack was shoved off her shoulder, and Candace blocked her path.  Candace was as big and strong as any boy in school and her breath smelled like pickles.

            “Hi Candace!”  Sally said as brightly as she could.  Candace squinted her eyes at such obvious fakery.  Sally imagined Alec crashing through a window, doing a shoulder role, and coming up with a kick to Candace’s belly that would send her straight through the wall.

            “Hi Smelly!”  Candace’s pickled words swept over Sally’s face.  She tired not to roll her eyes.

            “I need to get to class.”

            “You need to get out of my face.”

            “Well, actually…”

            “I know what you’re gonna say, but I don’t care.”  She then gave Sally her mean face, which was pretty scary.  Finally, Sally backed up and walked around her to get to her class, her backpack hanging from her elbow.  She took her seat near the row of windows where she could spend the class gazing at the silver dollar eucalyptus trees and doodling.  She found that she could get by in school if she either did the assigned reading or paid attention in class.  When her name was called, as it sometimes was, she did her best to piece together what was being asked of her.

            For long stretches she found herself watching the wind shiver the leaves.  When she looked down at her notebook, she found a series of concentric circles filling the page.

            “Anyone else have any thoughts on this?  Sally?”

            Sally looked up quickly from her desk as all eyes turned to her.  She quickly turned her eyes toward the board as her inner focused illuminated last night’s reading.  Science.  Physics.  Atoms.  She sees a drawing on the board of two arrows pointing towards each other’s points.

            “I think it’s weird that nothing really touches,” She said after a moment.

            Ms. Gleico nodded.  “It doesn’t feel like that does it?  Everyone, pay attention to things you are touching right now.  The clothes on your body, the desk and floor under you, your arms on the desk.  Or head touching desk.  Billy!  Sit up!  It’s hard to believe but what you are feeling is electromagnetic force.  Your hand atoms and the table atoms never touch.  They are repelled by each other.  They get close, but, like two magnets don’t actually touch.”

            “So,” Candace began, if I throw a pencil, at, say Sally, it won’t really bounce off of her head?”  Snickers scattered around the room.

            “That correct Candace, but you really will have detention.”  Ooooo’s and laughs filled the room.  Sally raised her hand.

            “Sally, I don’t want this to continue.”

            “No, Ms. Gleico, I was thinking about what you said about atoms.

            “Oh, okay, go ahead.”

            “If my hand atoms aren’t really touching the table atoms, does that also mean one hand atoms isn’t touching another one.”

            “No one atom can touch another.  Well, that’s not exactly true, but basically yes.”

            “So what makes me, me?  If the parts of my body aren’t rally touching?

            “That’s a great question, Sally, and I think we would need to look at what you mean when you say ‘me’ or ‘touch.’

            “Well, Ms. Gleico, this should make Candace feel really good.  It’s not just her brain that’s not really there, but everyone’s.”

            “Oh my god!”  Candace squealed.  “Did you hear that Ms. Gleico?”

            “I did Candace, since she was talking to me.  All right ladies, let’s call it a draw and get back to talking about schoolwork if you don’t mind.”

            Just after Ms. Gleico turned to write on the board, Sally felt a small wooden object bounce off the back of her head.  She smiled and whispered, “that didn’t really happen.”

Echo Part 1: Talking To Strangers

            The child’s footsteps surround her.  The tunnel’s darkness seems absolute, sandwiched between the semicircles of light at either end.  Panting, she runs toward the other side, her hair patting her shoulders, urging her on.  She is eleven years old with spindly legs that are accentuated by the white socks she pulled half way up her shins.  She watches the light bounce as she runs, until she bursts forth in front of the lake.  There, beneath the blue sky again, she lets herself lean over a fence post and peer down into the water and watch herself catching her breath.  Sufficiently recovered, she takes the lake at a measured stroll.

            The grown-ups don’t pay her any mind.  She tries to look each one in the eye.  The old ladies are too focused on getting their exercise, the couples watching each other.  Sometimes someone, it could be anyone, looks at her and gives a little smile, and she smiles back, or says good day, or simply nods.  She wants to be noticed, to be remembered, to be seen as a regular here.  She reaches into the pocket of her dress and fiddles with something.  Her smile is bigger, her steps quicken.  She walks into a gazebo and leans over her reflection again.

            “Nice day for a walk,” a man’s voice says.

            “Yes it is,” Sally says, her eyes still on the water.

            “I’ve seen you here before.”

            Sally looks up to give a polite smile because she doesn’t know what to say.  The man is standing a few feet away.  She can’t see his face because he looks down into the water.  He has black hair that looks wet and wears a long black raincoat.  Sally looks down at her bare legs and arms, then squints up at the sky.  It is so blue and bright it is almost white.  She shrugs and looks back in the water.

            “How many fish do you think are in there?” the man asks.

            “A thousand.”

            “A thousand?”

            “At least.”

            “Have you ever counted?”

            “Well, no.  But it’s a big lake.”

            “Have you ever swam in it?”

            Sally looks at him.  “You can’t swim in there!”

            “Why not?”

            “You’re not allowed.”

            “What’s that?”

            “I said…”  Before she finishes he turns toward her.  He is younger than she thought, just a few years older, still a boy himself.  He flashes her a smile, then hurtles over the wooden rail.  His coat billows up behind him, catching the air like the wings of a black butterfly, then like smoke, and then he sinks into the water.  Circles ripple out.  She waits, but feels no fear.  His confidence keeps him safe in her mind.  But after awhile the ripples are gone and he still hasn’t appeared.  She leans over, as far as she can, squinting into the water.

            “Hello?  Mister?”

            Nothing but a slight wave lapping the roots, like the tide in the ocean.

            “Ta da!”

            She jumps back and spins around.  There he is with that same grin, completely dry.

            “How did you do that?”

            He smiles, his eyes alive.  “How do you think?”

            If he had said, it’s magic, or, you wouldn’t understand or even not answered, she would have been mystified and in awe.  By asking her to tell him what he did, she immediately begins to deduce.

            “Well, you either dried really fast.  Or you didn’t get wet in the first place.  You could be the first guy’s twin.  You’re not his twin are you?”

            He laughs.  It has a pleasant sound and makes her feel comfortable.  “No, I’m not my twin.”  His calm makes him seem older, a young grown up.

            “Okay.  Don’t tell me!  I’m going to figure it out.”

            “I’m sure you will.  Hey, kid.”

            She has already bit her lip and looks into the water, trying to throw out some more theories.  She looks up when he called her.

            “I don’t know your name.”

            She tilts her head.  “I’m not supposed to tell strangers my name.”

            “Really?”  He steps toward her, the smile on his face, confusing her.  “Are you supposed to even talk to them.”

            “Well…I’ve been thinking about that.  It’s okay to say hello and to answer people when they ask a direct question, like what time is it?  I don’t want to be rude.”

            “So we are having a polite conversation.  Well, good.  You shouldn’t be telling strangers your name.  But I can tell you mine?”

            She shrugs, attempting to look bored.  “I guess. If you want.”

            “Call me Alec.  I’ll see you later kid.”  Without another word he spins on his heal and walks away.  His boots, which she just noticed, clip clop on the asphalt as he leaves her, continuing on down the path and out of sight.  She had no doubt that if she ran around the bend to follow him he would be gone.